by L G Hoel

Created on: September 16, 2010   Last Updated: April 22, 2012

I find blame with both  Bush and Obama for the present day struggling economy, but most of the blame goes to millions of greedy citizens. The greedy ones who now complain about the economy have to blame themselves. There has been unprecedented greed at every level of society for more than a decade. Everyone from welfare recipients to Wall Street money manipulators have been grabbing all they can get. Human greed brought the economy to its knees. The country is broke.

President Bush’s policies and his Congress helped pave the way for part of the present day struggling economy. The GOP held the reins of government during most of the Bush years. Government social assistance programs have been abused and helped create the now unsustainable debt.

For the first time in the Nation’s history parents don’t foresee their children having a better life than theirs. That didn’t happen over night. That feeling has been growing for many years with the loss of health care, income and buying power. It is going to take many years and changed lifestyles to regain a growing economy and restore the American dream

Bush/Cheney or as some would say the ‘Cheney/Bush Presidency’ was loved by big business. One of Dick Cheney’s first orders of business was to form the National Energy Task Force. It created energy policy that will be questioned for generations to come. The Task Force met secretly with lobbyists and representatives from the energy industry. The courts have ruled that what took place in those meetings must remain secret because of Executive Privilege. If those secret meeting helped bring about events such as the Deep-water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and contaminated drinking water caused by natural gas drilling the people should have the right to know. When important meetings regarding energy are done in secret it is not because they are trying to protect the public’s interest. They were all meeting to figure out how to maximize the bottom line.

Alan Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve for 18 years. He kept interest rates near zero for the last few years of his tenure. The new Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is doing the same thing. Interest rates have been near zero since 2008. He can’t seem to decide which is worse a struggling economy or inflation, so unemployed people must continue to scratch with the chickens.

American consumer spending makes up about 70% of GDP.

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